Barnes& Noble says it sells more e-books than print versions
Bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc. said Thursday that it now sells more digital books than paper ones on its online bookstore.
Customers bought or downloaded nearly 1 million e-books on Christmas Day alone, the company said in a statement.
The Nook e-reader has become a bestseller, according to the bookseller. The Nook Color, introduced two months before Christmas, was the company’s top-selling holiday gift item, Barnes & Noble reported.
Barnes & Noble launched the Nook last year to compete with Amazon’s Kindle reader.
Earlier in the week, Amazon released similarly rosy statements about holiday Kindle sales, calling the third-generation Kindle “the bestselling product in Amazon’s history, eclipsing ‘ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7).’ ”
The companies do not provide exact sales figures, but analysts estimate that Barnes & Noble has sold about 2 million Nooks, while Amazon is thought to have sold about 6 million Kindles, launched in 2007, according to Reuters.
While Barnes & Noble says it has a 20% share of the e-book market, the company has reported a loss in each of the last three quarters.
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